


Like A House On Fire

by Flutterbird



Category: Naruto
Genre: F/M, Haruno Sakura-centric, Rare Pairings
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-20
Updated: 2016-12-27
Packaged: 2018-09-09 22:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8916286
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Flutterbird/pseuds/Flutterbird
Summary: When one reaches the age of maturity their soulmate’s mark blossoms across their skin in a design as simple or as elaborate as the most intricate tattoo depending on the strength of the bond and the potential of the soulmate in question. Sakura should have known she was in deep shit the day she found a shark spanning the full of her back





	1. Tradition

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vesperchan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vesperchan/gifts).



> Yes I’m a sucker for this sorta prompt. First Naruto fic so please be gentle on me and yes I know it’s an odd pairing, but they sorta fit in their own weird way. Hence the title. Also Vesper-chan and Jaylene this one goes out to you two. Obviously I do not own these characters.

In Kirigakure it was tradition that when one received their mark that should it not meet the span and breadth of power expected of the chosen of a powerful Mist Shinobi that it was to be covered up. Most often this was done with village icons inked into ones skin to hide the shame of their bond in a show of loyalty. Other times Shinobi would have them replaced with symbols of strength or personal icons, whatever best hid the original image. 

Kisame had never had particularly high hopes for his soulmate. While he was a good ninja and a good swordsman fortune had never seen fit to particularly favor him. His sentiment was only further confirmed as he stood stark naked before his slightly tarnished and cracked bedroom mirror raking his eyes over his own skin in search for any sign of a mark. It took him far longer then he would have liked to spy the tiny intricate pink cherry blossom bud tucked against his collarbone like a featherlight kiss. The flower having the audacity to not even be in full bloom, it’s petals continuing to remain stubbornly closed no matter how hard the Kirigakure nin glared at them. The mark was weak, his soulmate was weak, and it made him look weak in return. 

Cursing under his breath Kisame dressed hastily knowing what he must do. As the apprentice to one of the Seven Swordsman he couldn’t afford to appear as anything less then terrifying. He could only hope the old lady that ran the tattoo parlor down the road would be willing to see him on such short notice. 

Slinging his sword over his back Kisame shouldered open the door to his apartment to slip out into the overcast early morning twilight a curse upon his soulmate resting on the tip of his tongue. However, it wouldn’t be the first time nor would it be the last time he’d curse them that day. 

\-----------------------

The old lady stared. Madam Miriso was her name, if Kisame recalled correctly, a woman with black shark like eyes not unlike Kisame’s and tanned worn skin from far too many days out in the sun. She was a tough old bird they said, but as Kisame fought not to fidget where he sat shirtless beneath her gaze he couldn’t see anything birdlike about her.

A frown twisted the old woman’s lips creasing her forehead with wrinkles as she squinted and peered at Kisame’s mark, examining it and him in turn like one might a particularly interesting insect. Where she not possibly the most gifted tattoo artist in the five elemental nations he might have been tempted to run her through.

“Well?” Kisame asked gruffly, his voice coming out slightly rougher then intended in his disconcertion. “I’ve heard you’ve covered up worse.” He added and indeed Kisame had, distraught and drunk nin tended to talk and he’d heard his fair share of horror stories when it came to sub-par soulmarks or worse black ones. Scrawling, ugly uncolored things like half-erased drawings leaving barely a shadow of what might have been indicating no matter how strong or how weak that ones soulmate was dead. Things like that tended to mess with a man and as tiny and insignificant as Kisame’s soulmark was he couldn’t help, but be grateful he hadn’t been branded by one of those monstrosities. 

“Won’t work.” The old woman croaked out her voice rough from disuse and likely too many of the cigars whose smoke tainted her parlor with their scent.

“What do you mean it won’t work?” Kisame blurted out in surprise warring between confusion and anger. 

“This little one,” Madam Miriso spoke tapping the unbloomed cherry blossom decorating his shoulder with her finger, “Isn’t done growing yet.” She explained leaning back slightly in her chair. 

“Not often you see an unfinished one, but it does happen. Only seen it twice before, one of them your fellow actually though I’m not at liberty to say which one.” She murmured digging into the pockets of her ink-stained apron to draw out a cigar before fumbling to find her lighter.

“By unfinished you mean it’ll keep growing possibly?” Kisame inquired trying to muffle the small spark of hope that bloomed in his chest. Maybe his soulmate wasn’t such a waste of time after all.

“Possibly. Likely means your soulmate is still a child or not born at all yet. If I cover it up now and it starts to develop it’ll just mean more work in the long run and a shoddier job. Come see me again once it settles if you still want it taken care of.” Madam Miriso explained managing to find her lighter and light the end of her cigar drawing in the smoke with a slow drag before releasing it with a sigh. 

All Kisame could do was nod as he drew his shirt back over his head and made to exit the shop into the steady drizzle that had begun in his brief stint within. Moving mechanically his thoughts distant with this latest tidbit of information he almost didn’t hear the old woman when she spoke.

“Oh and boy~” Madam Miriso called a slow, but almost warm smile spreading across her aged face. “Congratulation.” She spoke with a nod as Kisame let out a soft grunt of acknowledgement before with the tinkling of the shop door bells he was once again out in the rain. 

That night Kisame would lay in bed and wonder just what sort of person his soulmate would turn out to be. Would they be a shinobi? Would they be civilian? Would they be afraid of him? None of these questions he could answer and so putting them out of his mind he rolled over to sleep.

\-----------------------

It would be years before he thought of his soulmark again when his newest partner Itachi caught sight of the cherry blossom bud hidden in the hollow of his collarbone during one of their rare stops at an inn.

“Cherry blossom trees often bloom on battlefields.” The stoic Uchiha murmured eyeing the tiny mark with narrowed eyes and a slight tilt to his head reminiscent of a raven. 

“They say the late blooming blossoms are always the most beautiful.” Itachi adds leaving Kisame blinking at his usually silent partner. It was the most words he’d hear the Uchiha string together in one sitting since the two had become partners and it catches him by surprise. Kisame doesn’t need the reassurance having long since disregarded anything to do with his soulmate and tells Itachi as much. But in return he never comments about the twisted black marks that almost look like feathers that mar the Uchiha’s left leg.


	2. Rain

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would like to give a huge shout out to those who commented and encouraged me to keep working on this. I can't guarantee my updates will be the most regular, but the muse has not left me yet. Also for those wondering Itachi's soulmate will be revealed in future chapters. I hope maybe my writing will encourage other Kisa/Saku fans out there to write as well. This pairing needs a little more love.

Frontline medics tended to have a notoriously short lifespan. The only exception to this rule being Senju Tsunade and no one would dare say she was lucky to have survived this long. After all who would wish to live to witness the death of their soulmate, one teammate becoming a twisted monster, and their remaining teammate a deviant and a pervert. By their very definition the frontline medic was a juxtaposition, one few Shinobi could manage, and fewer could survive as. 

And as Kisame watched Itachi re-wrap for the fifth time the badly done bandages on the cut on his arm he realized that he had stumbled upon the one talent his prodigy of a partner lacked all skill in. Itachi was not a medic, would never be a medic, and very likely if left unattended might die of an infected papercut before his avenger of a brother ever dug his head out of his ass and succeed in killing him. Sighing Kisame urged Itachi’s hands away with a grumble and did the bandages himself silently grateful that even though Mist had little want or need for medical shinobi that he’d at least paid the tiniest bit of attention in first aid. Reluctantly as the heavens gave way to a downpour of rain Kisame resigned himself to the fact he was as likely to get proper medical attention, as he was to get a break. Which is to say highly unlikely.

_________________

In a distant training field in Konoha the sky too opens up with buckets leaving a young pink haired Genin to dodge flying boulders in the rain, the impacts splattering her with mud. Taking shelter behind one of the huge rocks Sakura cannot help, but unknowingly think along the same lines as Kisame.

Then Tsunade decides to add trees thrown not unlike lawn darts to the mix and Sakura comes to understand the ancient creed of the medic-nin. “What can get worse will get worse and at the worst possible time.”

Breathing deep Sakura squares her shoulders, grits her jaw and darts back out into the flying debris storm conjured up by her Shishou before Tsunade decides to destroy her hiding place with a well aimed punch. She could do this, she would do this, for her yet unknown soulmate, for Sasuke, for Naruto, but most importantly she’d do it for herself. 

Ducking under what she briefly recognized to be a pine of some sort Sakura skid through the mud her feet struggling even with chakra to gain traction on the slick ground. Spinning she back flipped over a barreling boulder her soul briefly crying out with victory…only to be sideswiped by the top of a oak wielded like a bat by her Tsunade thus sending her smashing through the underbrush and eating more mud then she had breakfast.

Laying face first in the dirt Sakura saw stars and was left to silently marvel, for not the first time, at the fact she wasn’t dead. Yet as she heard the tell tale angry stomps of Tsunade she hastily tagged on a “Yet” to her thoughts. She wasn’t dead “Yet.”

“Need I remind you Sakura that the first and most important lesson of a medic is to DODGE?” Tsunade scolded, Sakura needing to not even lift her head to see her mentor’s scowl to know it was in place. Yet despite that, with every muscle in her body screaming she still looked up and then immediately regretted it as her vision swam. 

“Esh Shish-o.” Sakura groaned and spluttered spitting out dirt and trying to sound out the words despite her broken and profusely bleeding nose. 

“Have you had enough? Or do you need another round to beat the fact this isn’t the career for you into your overly large forehead?” The woman asked with a tilt of her head her scowl seeming to only deepen with the darkening of her brow at the no doubt pathetic sight that was Haruno Sakura.

Eyes hardening, bones cracking, muscles and logic itself screaming at her to lay down Sakura slowly found herself pushing up on her arms as she dragged her knees beneath her. Then gritting her teeth she bowed pressing petal pink locks soaked with mud to the water laden ground in show of groveling. 

“If it would please you Shishou I would very much like to go another round. I am not yet ready to abandon my pursuit.” Sakura spoke sounding the words out with care around her broken nose and now gradually swelling lip as she tried her best not to slurr. She would not give up. She would become a medic-nin and Tsunade’s apprentice or she would die trying. 

Frowning down at the pink haired genin Tsunade’s eyes couldn’t help, but soften. “Hospital, tomorrow morning 4am sharp. You will be accompanying me on my rounds and then we will work on your dodging once more. See to it you get yourself treated, no apprentice of mine is going to walk around with a broken nose.” Barked out the Hokage, her tone sharp and broaching no argument as spinning on her heel she departed leaving a stunned Sakura to lift her head and stare in her wake.

It wasn’t till a few minutes later that her words finished processing leaving Sakura to jump to her feet despite the screaming protest of her muscles and yell out “SHANNARRO!” Only to promptly double over and lose her lunch from vertigo. Yet soaking wet, smelling of bile, and looking like death warmed over Haruno Sakura grinned from ear to ear the entire limping way to the Hospital. She was Tsunade’s apprentice and she would do her Shishou proud.

___________________

Huddling around a small fire in a distant cave watching the sheets of pouring rain just outside the shelter of rock Hoshigaki Kisame shivered as he noted his partner’s gaze locked upon him. Both of them to avoid hypothermia had stripped down to the bare minimum of their pants, which had thankfully been sheltered somewhat by their cloaks. Yet without the looming insulation the fabric provided Kisame found himself fidgeting under Itachi’s gaze before finally cursing himself for doing so. One would think, he mused, he would have long outgrown being bothered by the stares. 

“What?” The ex-Mist nin gruffed with clear displeasure even as Itachi merely arched a brow right back at him. Then wordlessly as ever the Uchiha pointed motioning to Kisame’s collarbone. Furrowing his brow in confusion Kisame dug out one of the mirror bright kunai from his pouch angling it to peer at his soulmark.

It was blooming. The cherry blossom’s delicate petals unfurling right before his eyes even as another smattering of unopened buds spread around it dappling his shoulder with their appearance. Eyeing the delicate curve of the flower in all it’s breath-taking detail Kisame had to admit Itachi had been right.

The late blooming blossoms really were the most beautiful.


	3. Bargaining

It had been an elaborate plan. One that by no means should have worked and Kisame was honestly far more surprised it almost had rather then that it had finally failed. Faking Samehada’s attachment to the eight-tail jinchūriki hadn’t been easy, but Samehada had always been willing to go above and beyond for him. They’d managed to merge and when the fool Killer B took Samehada for his “own” it had let Kisame walk right into Kumogakure. 

Then that Naruto brat just had to go and screw it all up by sensing his presence. Kisame had taken Samehada and fled and he’d been so close. So very very close to escaping when he’d finally succumbed to his injuries. They wanted him alive, Akatsuki would rather he be dead then give them the intel, but what did he want? 

He found it ironic that he would be pondering over such things at such a time, standing in his sphere of water his hands shaped ready to flood his last bit of chakra into ensuring his own demise. It was then that his soulmark caught his eye. It had been spreading, growing far beyond anything he had ever expected as the spring pink petal flowers had curled about his shoulder and ribs trailing down his left arm. Even as he watched another bud, this one in the crook between pointer finger and thumb, bloomed. 

What did he want? 

He wanted to see her face…just once. At least once. If he could see her face, the face of his cherry blossom kunoichi maybe he could die happy. Till then her couldn’t stand to die just yet…

And Kisame let the sphere of water drop never making a sound as he was dragged down into the earth up to his neck in chains of wooden roots. They would drag him and Samehada back to Konoha like animals. They would stick him in a tiny cell he could hardly stand up in and keep him dancing on the edge of life and death with their torture.

But Kisame never spoke a word. Not a whisper. He just closed his eyes and tried to image _her_. He would hold his information close. Not for the Akatsuki who would never come to rescue him, not for a group who he could no longer say was first in his priorities. No he’d hold it for her, because it was worth something and Kisame had always been good at bargaining.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very short chapter this time and for that I'm sorry. However, I wanted to get the whole sticky situation of Kisame dying out of the way. In this AU Kisame had Samehada fake it's 'fondness' of Killer B in order to trick Killer B into taking it. Samehada is still loyal to Kisame and Kisame alone at the moment though that may change a bit in future chapters when Sakura comes into play. Because really Killer B is a freakin Jinchuriki. He doesn't need a sentient shark sword. It just makes him look like he's compensating for something.


	4. Bloody Knuckle Knockout

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh? What's this? Two chapters in one day! Happy belated holidays readers! I hope you enjoy!  
> ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

For all that Sakura was a genius there were simply some subjects she was rather slow to learn. Most of these subjects had nothing to do with the head, but instead the heart. Over the years she had during the course of her training, her chuunin exams, a war, and kami only knows how many catastrophes learned two very important things. One: that she was not weak, and two: that Uchiha Sasuke was an absolute ass and not worth her time of day. It had taken nearly the entirety of the Konoha 11, two Hokages, and half the village to finally bludgeon these lessons through her stubbornly thick skull, but Sakura had finally learned them.

Thus it came to no ones surprise, but Sasuke’s that when he asked Sakura to marry him her immediate answer had not been yes. Instead Sakura had sat silently beside him upon the bench, the very same bench he’d left her unconscious on and in the cold so many years ago as she organized her thoughts. There was no courtship, no words of love showing just how easily the Uchiha expected her to be won. That is unless he thought trying to kill her multiple times was some sort of sick twisted show of affection. Sakura could play just as rough as the next girl, but damnit she wanted a lover who at least tried to keep her limbs intact!

And she had been twelve for Kami’s sake! She had been a hormonal idiotic child that had just wanted to fit in! No one knew who they wanted to be with for life when they were twelve! Neither of them even had their soulmarks yet and Sakura wasn’t sorry to admit that every day that she had looked in the mirror she’d gradually grown to hope against hope she wouldn’t be cursed by her childhood intentions and have Sasuke’s mark bloom across her skin. Was he really so vain as to think her entire existence had revolved around h~

Only Sakura never got to finish that thought. Silent in her musing the unseen count-down on how long she had to answer had run out and with it Sasuke’s pathetically minimal patience. He wasn’t used to being stood up or made to wait. Especially not by Sakura, never by Sakura. Sweet, innocent, helpless, crybaby Sakura who had always doted on his every word. 

“It’s not as though you’re likely to get a better offer~” Sasuke spoke, about to espouse on the lack of likelihood of anyone taking her in without a soulmark. They both, after all, were blank. Surely it was fated? But the words never finished leaving his mouth. Nay did his lips failed to even finish moving when he felt like a meteor had smashed into the side of his head. His vision blacked, light and his life flashing before his eyes as he felt his body go flying his lips still moving dimly in the shape of words he couldn’t voice as he crashed taking out some of the artfully planted trees lining the walkway. For a moment his eyes cleared, his Sharigan struggling to switch on as he took in the sight before him. Sakura, her chest heaving with fury, her fist still raised high the knuckles of her gloves torn from the sheer force of the impact as she grinned at the rivets of blood, his blood, her blood, running down her wrist from the ripped skin. In that moment she looked like a she-devil that had clawed it’s way right out of hell and all Sasuke could think as his world went blessedly dark was _“When did Sakura get so fast?”_

__________________________________________________________________________ 

In one of the deepest darkest cells beneath the depths of Konoha a figure paused. Glancing up from where they had been doing sit-ups their legs straddled over one of the beams of their cell they eyed their skin in the dim light. There upon their chest they watched the petals of a cherry blossom bud stir. The soulmark had spread over the years, decorating the skin of Kisame’s shoulder, arm, and neck, and moving to spread down over his chest and side. It had only recently ceased spreading yet one stubborn bud positioned right over his heart in all it’s sickeningly romantic irony, had refused to bloom. Yet as he watched beneath the dim-lamp light the final blossom unfurled revealing a flower just as stunning as the very first to his eyes. 

Somewhere out there in the sun, away from this dank dark cell his Cherry Blossom kunoichi had bloomed and he would find her. Konoha after all was getting desperate. They may have won the war, but there was blood in the water and nothing distracted an ally that could turn enemy at the slightest hint of weakness from your wounds like a mutual threat. 

Dropping to the ground Kisame stalked close to the bars no amount of darkness fit to hide his predatory half moon of a smile as he spoke.

“Tell your Hokage I wish to speak with her. I think she’ll be _very_ interested in what I have to say.”


End file.
